I think the reason that the ISU does not give an extra bonus to triple jumps in combination is that there is already a big bonus automatically built in. Namely, you get a whole extra jumping pass. Here is a simplified example. Skater A scores as many points in six passes as Skater B scores in seven.

I actually think the 70% is a red herring without taking exactly what are they 70% of X?

Just like these excuse for not punishing those with with UR to encourage harder content, means those who works hard perfect their jumps are no longer rewarded like they should. Those who aim for difficult combos like Zijun and Liza with 100% 6/7 perfect triples rate including difficult combos can not possibly compete with those with a built in high PCS but only 3 triples and more than 50% failures rate to land their triples that result in < or e. In any sport, surely quality, difficulty and sporting performance should be most important than reputation? Yes it is not all about jumps, but it should be an important aspect of the sport. A fair Sport should be where the young can defeat the old if they bring the goods on the day. In ladies figure skating, this is simply not possible with the state of the COP algorithm, where consistency scoring from one competition to the next carried on through out the season. If you look at all the protocals with < and e mark, the - GOEs with the reduced scale value hardly impact on the score any more. So why bother with quality anymore? The young have no way of winning, since they don't have the PCS, and they can't gain PCS without the tech.

Put it this way, if the algorithm is so perfect since all the changes after the Olympics, then why the ladies appears to be stagnant and no longer making good technical progress. It was only until Yuna's return who determines to put in her 3Lz3T despite its less rewards which artificially forced the field to upped theirs technical content regardless to the COP algorithm, but more to do with responding to rivals?

I have never stated 3A is not deserve its high value for its rarity and risks. I agree with it in principle. But I do question how the rule been changed for every other jumps including holding back the traditional money jumps like the Lutz did hurt the sport for the ladies substantially and wasn't done with care since women and men compete differently but these were not taken into account.

For men Quad are worth the risks due to better rewards and lessen risks, No women has 3A except 1, the Lutz the hardest for majority of the ladies, but they have been reduced in value due to the reduced scale of GOEs, BV unchanged so why should anyone go for it? 70% of Lutz is only worth 4.2, they might as well do other triples with +GOEs.

70% of 3A is fine, but 70% of 3A is not fine if it = Fully rotated 3Lz especially if the skater can't Lz

So clearly the 3Lz BV should increase, difficult combo should increase, or the % reward for UR should decrease, with greater penalties in GOE for failed jumps than now. COP is flawed, but it is also backwards in this day and age where computation and statistics should be readily available to measure sporting performances but are some how not.

I completely agree that GOE as it works now is flawed. I would prefer to see GOE scaled to 15% of each jump. After all, why should GOE be worth the same on a 3T and a 3Lz?

But the rest of your post I take issue with. Again with the double standards...
1. When Carolina and Mao were busy at work "pushing the sport back by 2 decades," they weren't going for 3 triples with <50% success rate on said 3 triples, they were going for 7. And by the standards of the self-styled jumping enthusiasts (at least one of whom is showing an admirable lack of double standards, I'm happy to say), they were landing 3 or 4. You can discount a 3flutz if you want, but it is still a 3-revolution jump that can be either rotated or underrotated, and in Mao's case she was not underrotating it. Zijun and Liza NEVER lost without committing significant errors like step-outs, falls, or pops. They are absolutely capable of beating Mao and Carolina if they are perfect and Mao and Carolina don't bring the goods.

2. 70% of a Lutz is 4.2. That's a 3S, or 0.1 more than a 3T. The -GOE will make it worth less than a high quality 3T or 3S. But how is that any different from a 3A< ? 3A< is 6.0, and that's a 3Lz. But again, a good 3Lz will get +GOE that makes it worth more than a 3A< in the end. This deduction may not be sufficient, but I've already said before what I think about it. Are you now going to argue that there's a bigger difference between 3Lz and 3T than there is between 3A and 3Lz? I already mentioned this very fact, which you chose to ignore earlier, yet here you are claiming that the fact that the same thing applies to a 3Lz is somehow unfair. I know you like Yu-na Kim, but you can't have it both ways when talking about fairness. If you're going to discount a program with a 3A for the fact that it lacks a 3Lz, then you'd better be discounting a program with a 3Lz for the fact that it lacks a 3A and a 3Lo.

3. If only one woman is doing a 3A with only occasional success, while multiple women are trying 3Lz with great success (Liza, Kim, Gold, etc), then how can you argue that there's not enough incentive for a 3Lz but the incentive for a 3A is high enough? Gold and Tuktamevshaya are both doing clean 3Lz-3T, which I think says a lot about its supposed increased rarity with respect to a 3A (How many women are landing 3A or even 3A<? ). But I do not by any means think we disagree on everything. Perhaps difficult 3-3 combos are not being attempted enough though; how about adding a bonus 0.5 to a 3-3T combination and a bonus 1.5 to a 3-3Lo combination, due to its much lower number of attempts (even among the men) and dreadfully low rate of success? I think there is nothing preventing ladies from doing 3Lz but the lack of ability to do so, just like there's nothing else holding them back from doing 3A.

I think the reason that the ISU does not give an extra bonus to triple jumps in combination is that there is already a big bonus automatically built in. Namely, you get a whole extra jumping pass. Here is a simplified example. Skater A scores as many points in six passes as Skater B scores in seven.

No, it should not

Originally Posted by Mao88

Currently, the base value for a triple axel is 8.5. However, in the ladies event, the 3A is so rarely landed cleanly that I don't think 8.5 properly reflects how difficult it is in the ladies event. Only 6 ladies skaters have successfully landed a 3A in competition in the entire history of figure skating, and it has taken Mao a long time to get the 3A back.

Hence, should the base value for a 3A be increased?

Do you really think Mao has not rewarded for her controversial 3A enough?
You created this thread right after mao's sp, mao88. and everyone knows why.
We know that 4cc GOE would not likely to happend in Canada. Her fan must be desperate.
It's all because Mao's 3A is not consistent enough to guarantee her a win.
Obvious. Look at what happened in FP. Two footed 3A, underrotated triples on and on.
Her 3A is not solid. Always controversial and playing with the rule change. It's not like Men's Quad.

My answer is NO.
Mao has finally proved that the rule is there for her at this 4cc with huge and generous GOE thrown at almost every element,
after two years of struggle.
Why want more? cos it's not enough to win whom?
This thread is silly. We all know why.

The ISU wants a single schedule of base values that will apply to both men and women and for the full range of abilities from beginner to world champion. If they put the value of the triple Axel up, say, to 9.9, reflecting the true relative difficulty between a double Axel and a triple, then they would have to put the value of quads way up, too. (A triple Axel is listed as the "lowest quad," not the highest triple.)

Right now the factor of increase of a quad over a triple is about 2.5, rather than the factor of 3 for a triple jump over a double jump. They can't put the base value of quads any higher because if they did then in men's skating at the top level the only thing that counts would be the number of quads.

As I recall, in some of the preliminary beta versions of the CoP quads were scored higher. But when they tested the CoP against past competitions, it turned out that Timothy Goebel with his three quads would beat both Yagudin and Plushenko at the 2002 Olympics. That wpuld be like Kevin Reynolds winning Four Continents. So when the 2003 version on the CoP came out, quads were valued less.

Since then they have raised the values of quads slightly (the Buttle/Lysacek effect).

Anyway, the current value of 8.5 is about 2.5 times as high as the 3.3 value for a double Axel (they lowered the value of the double Axel from 3.5 to 3.3 to make it come out that way). This is consistent with triple toe 4.1, quad toe 10.3, triple Sal 4.2, quad Sal 10.5, etc.

I was okay with Kevin Reynolds winning Four Continents given how Yuzuru and Daisuke fibbed their jumps. Course, I still think Daisuke is by far the better skater, but on that day, Kevin was, in my mind, the rightful winner.

So all this discussion leads me to think that the jump point scale doesn't need to be changed... until the day when there's a result at a crucial competition that leaves everyone scratching their heads and thinking 'Huh?'

About the 70% factor for under-rotation, that has a history, too. My memory is not perfect here, but I am pretty sure that in the first versions of the CoP there was no designation for under-rotations, just whatever negative GOE the individual judges wanted to apply.

Then the ISU went on a rampage against skaters who just threw any old thing up and called it a triple. The downgrade rule went into effect, where an under-rotated triple was downgraded to a double, then negative GOEs applied on top of that. This essentially took away the jump's entire score.

This was too draconian. A skater's entire fate lay in the hands of a whimsical caller who could utterly destroy the performance for errors that appeared to be minor to the audience, if the audience could perceived them at all. Meanwhile more visible errors like falls were given a pass, relatively speaking. So they moderated the penalty by coming up with the 70% rule for mild under-rotations. IMHO this has turned out to be a reasonable compromise.

They tried a similar approach with wrong edge take-offs for flips and Lutzes. Remember the ! and e? For some reason, unlike under-rotations, the idea of having the tech specialist call "mild bad edge" or "severe bad edge" didn't work out so well. They went back to the single call "e," allowing the judges to deal with it as each felt appropriate.

About the 70% factor for under-rotation, that has a history, too. My memory is not perfect here, but I am pretty sure that in the first versions of the CoP there was no designation for under-rotations, just whatever negative GOE the individual judges wanted to apply.

Then the ISU went on a rampage against skaters who just threw any old thing up and called it a triple. The downgrade rule went into effect, where an under-rotated triple was downgraded to a double, then negative GOEs applied on top of that. This essentially took away the jump's entire score.

This was too draconian. A skater's entire fate lay in the hands of a whimsical caller who could utterly destroy the performance for errors that appeared to be minor to the audience, if the audience could perceived them at all. Meanwhile more visible errors like falls were given a pass, relatively speaking. So they moderated the penalty by coming up with the 70% rule for mild under-rotations. IMHO this has turned out to be a reasonable compromise.

They tried a similar approach with wrong edge take-offs for flips and Lutzes. Remember the ! and e? For some reason, unlike under-rotations, the idea of having the tech specialist call "mild bad edge" or "severe bad edge" didn't work out so well. They went back to the single call "e," allowing the judges to deal with it as each felt appropriate.

All these changes were really good. It was so excruciating to be a figure skating fan few years back!! I like it much, much better now.
I still question how skaters can get any points for jumps that they fall on, but in the interest of encouraging more difficult jump layouts, I consider it a necessary evil.

Come to think of it, CoP has made the nature of figure skating spectatorship into a totally different experience for me. Before CoP, watching my favorite skater jump was simply excruciating, and if I saw him/her fall, I knew that was it for them, and time for me to start singing a dirge. But now, of course I still gasp when my skater falls but I know it's not over for them and I watch the rest of the program still holding onto hope. And before CoP, once my favorite skater's routine finished, I could start breathing again and I just waited with my skater for the score. Now, even after my skater finishes, I'm not able to breathe normally yet, because I have to obsessively look at the slo-mo of jumps so that I can make an educated guess as to what my skater's score is gonna be.

About the 70% factor for under-rotation, that has a history, too. My memory is not perfect here, but I am pretty sure that in the first versions of the CoP there was no designation for under-rotations, just whatever negative GOE the individual judges wanted to apply.

Then the ISU went on a rampage against skaters who just threw any old thing up and called it a triple. The downgrade rule went into effect, where an under-rotated triple was downgraded to a double, then negative GOEs applied on top of that. This essentially took away the jump's entire score.

I'm not aware of how underrotated jumps were handled in any "beta version" of the scoring system before it was tried out publicly at fall competitions in 2003. But at that time, downgrading was already in effect, in an extremely draconian manner -- if a triple was determined to be short of rotation by >90 degrees, the jump was called as if it had one less revolution.

So there are no symbols on the protocols, just doubles listed where the naked eye saw triples, and triples where the naked eye saw quads (which, depending on the acuity of the eyes in question, may have looked cheated or otherwise not quite right).

Then, at 2003 Trophee Lalique IIRC, Michael Weiss had his 4T downgraded to a 3T and he also executed two triple toes later in the program. The last triple toe element ended up getting no points because as far as the computer knew he had done three triple toes and violated the Zayak rule.

So then the next year they introduced the < symbol so that instead of calling an underrotated triple as a double or quad as a triple, they could call it as the jump that was intended, and count it as the intended jump for purposes of the Zayak rule, while indicating that the rotation was not sufficient. The base value was still that of the lower revolution jump.

This solved the Zayak problem and also made the protocols more informative after the fact. And was probably a better way for tech panels to communicate the call to judging panels as well, although I think there may have been a year or two in there when the judges did not see the < symbols.

But the penalty (loss of a 360 degrees worth of base mark for 91+ degrees of underrotation) was still too severe, so that's why they finally introduced the 70% base value for jumps 91-180 degrees short, and the distinction between < and << codes.

Thanks gkelly. I had forgotten about that triple-whammy Zayak problem.

I think Hurrah's post, number 97 above, sums things up nicely. The IJS is actually working pretty well -- until the inevitable next competition where something unexpected happens and we say, whoops -- is that how we really want it to work?

Thanks gkelly. I had forgotten about that triple-whammy Zayak problem.

Probably only a triple-whammy problem with downgraded quads if the skater was also doing triple of the same takeoff and repeating one or the other. Or, with triple axels now that double axels are limited to two in the junior and senior LP.

Since there's no limit on repeating non-axel doubles at the junior and senior levels, if anything having a triple downgraded to a double would in theory have given skaters the opportunity try an underrotated jump again if they thought they could rotate it better the next time. In practice, though, it would be rare that a skater would know for sure that an attempted triple was going to be called as a double, so trying again would have risked the later attempt not counting and thus waste a jump slot that could have been used on a different jump that wouldn't have Zayak rule issues.

I think Hurrah's post, number 97 above, sums things up nicely. The IJS is actually working pretty well -- until the inevitable next competition where something unexpected happens and we say, whoops -- is that how we really want it to work?

Yeah. No matter what rules they set, occasionally there will be some unintended or paradoxical consequences. If it's a fluke situation, we just have to live with it. If it's a pattern, or if the first occurrence uncovers a logical flaw that will lead to an undesirable pattern, then it's best to change the rule. But then they have to figure out what to change it to that wouldn't introduce even more undesirable consequences.

Yeah, I mean it's not like a skater turning a quad into a 3T or 3S, for which the Zayak rule should apply for later in the program. An intended 4T, even if <<, should not negate the second of two later 3Ts. This would otherwise really discourage skaters from trying harder jumps as it makes more sense to rack up points with a clean 3T in combination then prevent that by doing a downgraded quad.

As far as this thread, I think the 3A should be a higher value. It's clearly a high risk element that has great potential for errors -- I would put it at a 9.0. Likewise, the 4T at 10.8 (instead of 10.3) and 4S at 11.1 (instead of 10.5), since those are even riskier maneuvers which have huge potential for under-rotation.

Skaters are being encouraged already in the PCS mark to improve their artistry, but they have to also be encouraged to try more technically demanding programs. It's great when skaters like Fernandez and Reynolds who don't have the best PCS do three quad programs and win because it shows that with risk you can be well rewarded - even if you don't have the best PCS - and thus, the sport progresses. Of course this is more of a problem in the ladies, since the men have clearly upped their technical game.

Perhaps increases to the BV of 3A and quads should be much higher for just the ladies?

Perhaps increases to the BV of 3A and quads should be much higher for just the ladies?

I always thought it was cool to have the same standards for men and for women. The only problem is that it creates those awkward .80 and 1.60 multipliers for ladies' PCS. Other than that -- well, the ladies do a lady-like Ch spiral sequence while the gentlemen do a manly romp-em-stomp-em step sequence, but that's about it.

I wonder how that works out for children. I don't think little boys are automatically more vigorous leapers than little girls of the same age, so presumably you could have unisex competitions. (My understanding is that if there is only one boy and a whole bunch of girls then the boy has the option of skating against the girls or skating by himself against a performance standard.)

The main problem I see is that the little boys would try to be chivalrous and let the girls win.

I think the reason that the ISU does not give an extra bonus to triple jumps in combination is that there is already a big bonus automatically built in. Namely, you get a whole extra jumping pass. Here is a simplified example. Skater A scores as many points in six passes as Skater B scores in seven.

Skater A

3Lz+2T
3Lz
3F
3Lo
3S
3T
2A

Skater B

3Lz+3T
3Lz
3F
3Lo
3S
2A+2T
7th pass

That may be the way they're thinking but logically, is 3Lz and 3T as hard as 3Lz+3T? Also, if the 3Lz and 3T get extremely positive GOE and the 3Lz-3T is UR or sth than the skater A may actually outscore the skater B on jumps so that the 7th pass becomes irrelevant.